HBS Startup Is Developing Tech-Enabled Jewelry to Stop Rapists

Is it possible to create a personal-safety device that can stop a physical assault, call for help, and collect evidence for the police? And be fashionable? Those are questions HBS students Sara de Zarraga and Quinn Fitzgerald (both MBA 2017) are currently exploring at the Harvard i-lab.

Working with survivors of sexual assault and with a team of MIT engineers, the cofounders of Flare Jewelry are developing wearable devices that include an alarm, text messaging to alert the wearer’s phone contacts of her GPS whereabouts, and an audio recorder that can capture sound files that might be used later in court.

“It will be a modular piece that can be put in bracelets or necklaces,” Fitzgerald told the tech website BostonInno.

“The modular component keeps it versatile and discreet, so no two styles look alike,” de Zagarra said.

“We realize we won’t stop sexual assault from happening,” Fitzgerald said. “But we want to work together to create a culture against it. We want to be part of the solution.”